Welfare stigma in a social democratic welfare regime during a decade of national public debate: production, contestation and continuities

Abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate how welfare stigma is produced and counteracted in the public sphere in a social democratic welfare regime. The Norwegian case represents a generous welfare state that historically has been thought to lessen and avoid stigma connected to welfare benefits. While studies have identified a hardening anti-welfare consensus and stigma production in liberal welfare regimes, we know less about how the connection between welfare benefits, stigma production and resistance has played out in the recent developments in the social democratic welfare regime context. Public debates give access to a dynamic political battleground where different actors participate, and we analyse six welfare-related national debates covered in Norwegian newspapers between 2010 and 2019. We identify key stakeholders, symbolic boundaries used to distinguish deserving from undeserving recipients, and we discuss the outcomes and wider functions of these debates. The debates contain moral aspects of welfare and allegations of fraud by recipients in general as well as by targeted groups such as Somali single mothers, refugees and young adults. We find that stigmatizing framings known from other national contexts also enter the Norwegian debates and illustrate how welfare stigma production plays a role in promoting more selective welfare policies.